


And the Waves Clasp One Another

by nahco3



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two days after their marriage, the new Mrs. Croft arrived in Greenwich.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Waves Clasp One Another

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyricalnights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalnights/gifts).



Two days after their marriage, the new Mrs. Croft arrived in Greenwich. Her husband had received his orders the night previously, and ridden at dawn, leaving Mrs. Croft a scant few hours to pack her belongings and make such farewells as she could via the morning post. There was nothing else to be done – when she married the captain, she had married His Majesty’s Royal Navy as well, and she was as bound by her husband’s oaths to it, as much as by her oaths to him. These were the sentiments she conveyed in her notes: that though her departure was sooner than she expected, there was nothing to be done, when King and Country called, they must be answered.

It was quite nearly the truth. The truth was, she would not be parted from the Captain again. She has waited on shore for the four long years of their engagement, waiting for him to win the promotion that would allow him to earn their living. Throughout the fragile peace and the open warfare with France, she had waited. But now, a third collation had been gathered and George had been given his commission. Mrs. Croft supposed she owed Bonaparte a debt of gratitude.

The carriage she rode in stopped, and one of the footmen opened the door for her. She stepped out onto the wet cobblestones of the street before the docks. Her husband’s ship, no, their ship, the H. M. S. _Brilliant_ , was at anchor before her. It – she – was smaller than Mrs. Croft had expected, three masts, two decks, her broad square sails furled, her spars stretching bare to either side. It beggared Mrs. Croft’s belief that the _Brilliant_ could hold so many men – her husband had written to tell her that nearly 300 would sail with them – when it looked as though it would fit comfortably in her Great-Aunt Constance’s ballroom. She smiled, thinking how shocked her aunt would be to wake and find _these_ three hundred men and one lady in her ballroom – some of the men even Irishmen, and most without two shillings to rub together.

As she surveyed her new home, the footmen unloaded her trunks from the carriage at her direction, and then departed. Mrs. Croft stood at the dock alone, her hem already wet, watching the bustle around her. The sailors were loading barrels, bundles, animals, cannon, hauling lines. Their voices echoed about the dock, loud, sometimes raising in grunting song, other times shouting harsh greetings, or commands. The quay smelled of refuse, and drink, and above all the sharp tang of the sea.

She felt herself an inconvenience, another bundle set in the men’s way. Mrs. Croft indulged in three long breaths of panic and then gathered her skirts and moved towards the nearest group of sailors.

“Pardon me,” she said, quickly, and the men turned, pulling off their hats and awkwardly bobbing down in bows that were wholly inappropriate.

“Your ladyship,” one of them said, a tall, broad man with dark curly hair, “what’s a person such as yourself doing on these docks?” His fellow elbowed him in the stomach.

“I am sailing with my husband, Captain Croft,” she said. “I was hoping one of you could help me load my trunks aboard the ship, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“You’re sailing with us, milady?” a man with an Irish brogue asked, bemused. “We’re going to be chasing Boney to hell and back, begging your lady’s pardon. Wouldn’t you rather be in safe in London?”

She took a deep breath, preparing herself to respond, when a man’s voice rang out, loud enough to be heard across the Channel: “Who told you devils to stop working? The tide doesn’t wait for you pay your attentions to pretty ladies.”

“Sorry ma’am,” the Irishman said, and the rest of the men touched their hats and moved off, leaving her with her luggage still. She bit her lip, considering. She couldn’t pull the men aside to help her as though she was still in her own home, in her parents’ house, rather – the men had their own tasks to do, and she lacked the authority to give orders. One of these men was her husband’s servant, and Mrs. Croft imagined that if she could find him, he could be prevailed upon to help her. But among three hundred milling and indistinguishable men, she could not possibly find him. She could see the officers standing aboard ship, set apart by their blue jackets and gold braid, but her husband was not among them, and in any case, she did want to trouble officers on the brink of war with her simple concerns. 

Her gaze moved along the deck of the ship, past the officers and towards the gangplank. Amid the flow of men, she noticed small lads darting up and down with practiced ease, many of them burdened with shot and barrels of powder. These were the powder monkeys George had told her of. One caught her eyes. He was small, his shirt threadbare and dirty and his britches held up by a loop of rope. He dropped easily from the gunwales of the ship down to the dock, landing on the ground and pushing his hair out of his eyes. As he trotted towards the tower of canon balls stacked at the far corner of the dock, a group of younger, even more ragged boys materialized behind him. They imitated his rolling gait, laughing among themselves as they did so, but when the powder monkey stopped to pick up the shot, they clustered around him.

“What’s it for?”

“You’ver killed someone?”

“You’ver seen a mermaid? Huh? Hav’ya?”

An idea struck her. When the boys passed close to her, following the powder monkey back to the ship, she reached out and grabbed one by the shoulder.

“You, what’s your name?”

He stopped, and gave her a contemptuous look. “I ain’t doing nothing wrong, miss.”

“I never supposed you were,” she said. “I was merely wondering if you were interested in serving His Majesty’s Navy.”

The boy’s eyes lit up and he pulled himself into a gross approximation of attention. Mrs. Croft hid her smile as best she could, her lips barely quirking to the side. “Anything to capture Boney, miss,” he said.

“I admire your patriotic spirit,” she said, “but I have something a bit simpler in mind. I was hoping I could commission you and your friends to help me carry my luggage onboard.”

The boy gave her trunk and baggage a shrewd look, evaluating the weighty effects. “Two shillings.”

“One,” she responded, “and you’ll share it equally amongst all of you.”

He nodded decisively, then took his palm and spat into it, holding it out for her to shake. Her Dear Mama might flinch away, her great-aunt would surely scream: Mrs. Croft was going to sea and so she removed her linen glove, spat into her own palm and shook his hand, firmly.

The boys loaded her baggage quickly onto the ship, while she followed, bending to pick up the occasional parcel, and surreptitiously wiping her hand on her skirt. They dodged the sailors deftly, even if a few threw curses at the boys, and Mrs. Croft did her best to direct them to the stern, where the Captain’s cabin – her cabin – was. The group managed to find it with only a few false turns; fortunately, the ship was small enough that it was impossible to truly lose one’s way. She paid the boys and sent them on their way, assuming that one of the sailors would find them wherever they tried to hide and remove them before the _Brilliant_ set sail.

She set herself to unpacking, her mind and purpose firm as she undid she laid away her linens and made her bed. Her mother had tucked satchels of lavender in between her sheets, and she inhaled deeply, thinking suddenly of her mother and father sitting alone in the house in town. It would be just breakfast. Her mother would chatter lightly and her father would respond slowly, infrequently. Mrs. Croft recalled, with terrible immediacy,l the filtered light of a London morning, her great-grandmother’s silver, smooth and familiar to the touch, the rare, worn luxury of home. Her mother singing in the evenings, her father’s gentle snores, the warm crackle of the fire: overwhelmed by the loss of it all, she sat on the edge of her half-made bed with her belongings scattered about her, crying into the sheets. Even if she were to some day return to England, and as the ship’s timbers creaked and the floor swayed, that no longer seemed certain, she would never never live in that home again with her parents, never be their _daughter_ again.

She sat for a moment, her face pressed into the linens, shaking. Then, composing herself with some effort, she stood, smoothing invisible wrinkles out of her skirt with determined hands.

When her husband entered the cabin, she was tugging on one edge of the sheet.

“Oh,” she said, straightening, “George, I did not expect to see you so soon.”

“Sophia,” he said, moving to embrace her, “I am the captain of this ship, I suppose I can take a moment to see my wife before I set sail.”

“I suppose you can,” she said, leaning into his arms.

“The royal navy should bring you on as a boatswain,” he said, looking about the room. “I admit I have no idea how you contrived to get everything on board so quickly, while my useless servant was lighting himself on fire, or whatever it is he does when I need him particularly.”

“I pressganged some... men,” she admitted, “a method I will admit to employing, even if the navy will not. And as for the rest, it is not so very difficult to neaten up a room.”

“If you could see the armory right now, my dear, you would be soon disabused of that notion,” he laughed. She kissed his cheek and pulled away from him, her doubts dwindling.

“If you can spare another minute,” she said, “I can never quite determine how to force a sheet to lie flat with only one set of hands.”

He laughed again, a boisterous lovely sound, filling the room. “My dear Sophia, adore you as I do, the tide waits for no man, and it will certainly not wait for us to, well…”

“Honestly, George,” she said, her cheeks hot, but laughing all the same. “I must protest.” She threw the nearest object at hand, a pillow, at his head. He caught it easily. “I meant no innuendo, I would never stain your virtue in such a manner.”

“My virtue,” he said, laughing.

“We are alone and unchaperoned,” she said, “and you have just admitted I am more than equal to any man on this vessel.”

He smiled at her, wide and warming. “Right you are. Thus, I am at constant risk from you, I suppose. I must trust in your gentility.”

“I will parole you,” she said, “if you promise to return, and if you help me with this sheet; it really is a nuisance.”

“Of course.” He gave a gallant bow. “You must only direct me.”

They worked in silence, carefully smoothing down opposite ends of the sheet, then laying a blanket evenly over the top of it. From the deck, the sharp chime of two bells rang out.

“I’m needed on deck,” George said. “We sail soon, come above if you want to see us cast off. I will rejoin you as soon as I am able, my love.”

“Go,” she said. “I’ll be up in a moment.” After he left she looked around the cabin, resting her hand against the smooth and polished wood of the ship’s hull, breathing in the brine and cooper scent. Out of the windows to the stern she saw the grey-green water, the broad streaks of white light coming off the ocean dancing across the walls of her bedroom, and felt the gentle rock of the sea. She could hear the lapping of the wave against the hull, the shouts of the men above deck: a world surrounding her, compact and chaotic, in need of order. She smiled and walked out, climbed the sloped ladder to the deck, turned her back on England and looked out towards open water.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you lyricalnights, for the lovely prompt. I hope you enjoy this! thanks also to my beta reader, mightequinn. the title is from Shelley's poem "Love's Philosophy."


End file.
